90-Day A Better Me Series

Part III: Living the Journey

Making the Now Count: Rebuilding our Lives

Day 90: Leading by Example

“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.”

-John Maxwell

When I started this 90-Day A Better Me Series, one of my goals was not just to write about how to clean up our own foundation, re-build, then share our tools with others. It was to do the steps along with my readers. That is why I wrote the 90-Day A Better Me Letters Series to go with it. Before the 90-Day A Better Me Series, I had done a test-run of my 35-Day A Better Me Boot Camp, which I also did along with participants. I don’t just talk about these concepts, like I’ve said before these concepts of self-care aren’t new. What you are seeing in these pages is how I applied them to my life, how I combined them, and how I saw the connections between them. I made what sometimes people us to separate and disconnect each other into connections within me through loving feelings, thoughts, perspectives of truth, actions, reactions, and responses. I don’t believe in do as I say, not as I do thinking.

I don’t expect people to do more than I’m willing to do myself. I don’t expect people to do anything they are not ready to do, or don’t want to do. I know when someone is ready because they don’t talk about wanting to change, they step up and do the work. We have to want peace to the point where we are willing to step out of our own chaos. For some of us, we’ve been marinating in chaos from before we even could understand it. Chaos becomes comfortable. I get it, internal chaos was a comfort zone for me for a long time, I still attach to a little chaos here and there. I just keep taking steps and it becomes less and less. I had to live this in order to show the way for others.

“People may doubt what you say, but they will believe what you do.”

Lewis Cass

Being the change means we lead by example. I told you early on that if you stuck with me through the entire series and did the work things would start transforming in your life. I wrote, read, and did the work of the series for these last 90 days, and I have to report that once again, AMAZING shifts within me and in my external world keep happening. On Day 88, I signed a contract for my first book deal, Letters from A Better Me: The Empowered Woman. On Day 89, my passenger side window of my car broke; I kept a positive attitude about it. When I called to make an appointment to get it fixed, the woman on the phone told me anytime I need anything, please contact her directly because she considered me a pleasure to work with and she loved the energy that I put off. Those are just a couple examples of the kind of things that have been happening.

The energy we put out will come back to us, so if we truly want to stand up as a leaders, we have to be the example. If we expect others to do what we aren’t willing to do ourselves, we often will be led to live in lack. We won’t appreciate what others are doing, because we can’t see how challenging it can be to do what we are asking them to do. When we see people working through challenges, we are more likely to appreciate their efforts if we have been there ourselves. Leading by example keeps us in the energy of gratitude/abundance.

We ALL have the opportunity to learn from the mistakes, trips, slaps in the faces, trauma, drama, chaos, confusion, and losses we experience. How we get up is how we choose to lead others. Do we lead through the path of love or the path of fear? What we choose to do says it all. If we ourselves make a mistake, then we go attacking others by shaming, blaming, and judging to get the heat off ourselves, we are teaching others to do the same. If we make a mistake, take responsibility, and take actions to learn from and find solutions encouraging others to help get creative— The mistake can be avoided next time. We bring light into the darkness and let our mistakes teach us how to become better.

“What you do has far greater impact than what you say.”

-Stephen Covey

How people choose to live, choose to lead, choose to feel, choose to think, choose to believe, and choose to act will be different. The questions we want to be asking ourselves:

• Are we making life choices from a place of love OR fear?
• Are we choosing to lead from a place of love OR fear?
• Are we choosing our feelings based on beliefs of love OR fear?
• Are our perspectives of truth from a place of love OR fear?
• Are we choosing to perceive events, conversations, self-reflection from a place of love OR fear?
• Are we judging others from a place of love OR fear?

The energy we project will come from the love or the fear within us. What we manifest comes from the love or the fear we project. What we attract back to us comes from the love or the fear we manifested in the world. BE CLEAR on what you are putting out there for others to spread and expand upon. Lead by example!

5 Steps to Leading by Example

1. Be AWARE of the ENERGY you are projecting (Days 2-30)! We all have light (love) and darkness (fear) within us. Be aware of which one you are letting be the dominant energy you are choosing to live by.
2. Accept responsibility for your choices (Day31-60)! Others cannot make us feel, think, or do anything. You make choices in how you want to perceive what happens and how you interpret people, places, and things. Don’t give your power away by blaming, shaming, judging, and hating. Doing those things puts your energy in your darkness.
3. Be solution minded (Day 61-90)! Staying in the energy of blame keeps us stuck (lack) in the darkness and blocks our minds from finding creative solutions (abundance). If you are open and willing to learn from the mistakes and missteps, you can make changes and improvements that turn out better than the solutions that come from the energy of fear and lack. Those solutions tend to cause more problems in the future, because lack breeds lack.
4. Be the change (Day 89)! Represent the energy and the change that you want to see. Do whatever work necessary to keep you projecting light into the world.
5. TAKE CARE OF YOUR ENERGY!!! SELF-CARE, SELF-CARE, SELF-CARE! Make sure you have an active self-care regimen (Day 73). Do the work to keep yourself in the energy you want to be creating your reality from. This is your life, LEAD IT!

When we are truly ready to take responsibility for our lives, we empower ourselves to BE THE CHANGE—No stories, no blaming, no shaming, and NO EXCUSES! We become the light and can lead ourselves through the darkness. If others choose to see our light, it will help them to see what was hidden in their own darkness. We then can give them tools to help keep their light on—Leading by example.

Thank you for joining me on this 90-Day adventure. I’ve loved all the interactions, comments, and places this journey has led me to. I’m so incredibly grateful for the time you’ve taken to read the words I’ve felt led to write. Three months, around 400 hundred pages, and whole lot of love has filled me with abundance and gratitude for this amazing life I’m choosing to live. Now, I’m in the best place possible to work on the trimming and editing of the Letters from A Better Me: The Empowered Women.

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With Love and Gratitude,

Rachael Wolff ©2019

Read today’s Letter from A Better Me 90-Day A Better Me Letters Series: Day 90 – Committing to Lead by Example